Pet Loss Support

Sit with Henry

You don’t have to go through this alone. If you're here it means you love deeply, and you have lost, or are facing the loss, or someone who means the world to you.

Sometimes, what we need most from pet loss grief support, is a quiet place to sit, and someone who will simply listen. I created Henry for this purpose. For those early times in grief, when we are not quite ready to deal with real humans, but the "what if's" and "if only" thoughts in our heads are invading what little peace we can find. For those nights when we cannot sleep and there is no one to speak to, or who understands us, and we wish there was.

He is named Henry after my Golden Retriever Henry, who is in my header image and in photos all over this website. I was devastated when he had to be euthanised in 2013 when he suddenly collapsed and went blind in one eye, and was then found to have cancer behind his eye, which had spread to his chest. He was 15, and I am still crying typing this now.

This Henry is the "living" embodiment of all the qualities of patience, empathy, love and kindness I have experienced over a lifetime, from my dogs. 

He is wearing red, to represent my Cocker Spaniel Red, also in photos all over this website, who I lost in 2016 due to a reaction to a flea treatment, and which also devastated me. So when I look at him, I see Henry and Red.

This Henry is a gentle pet loss support companion who spends his time in a quiet cottage, reading from a book filled with the stories of beloved animals. He listens without judgement, and speaks with care.

If you are a pet parent grieving the loss of a pet, or preparing to say goodbye, you are welcome to sit with him for a while.

You can share your companion’s name, a memory, or simply how you are feeling.

When you feel ready, you can begin here:

You don’t have to find the right words. You can simply type whatever you are feeling.

You are welcome here, for as long as you need.

When you feel ready, you may also want to join our 

Pet Loss Grief Support Group

Join Our Pet Loss Support Group

Pet Loss Matters – A Place to Belong

For twenty years, this website has been a place where people come quietly, often in the middle of the night, looking for something they cannot quite name. Not answers, exactly. Not solutions. Just the feeling that someone else has been here too. That what they are going through is real, and known, and not something they have to carry entirely alone.

That has always been what Pet Loss Matters was built for.

And now I want to take it further.

Why a Community?

A website, however full of love and care, can only do so much. It can hold your story. It can offer words that feel true. But it cannot talk back to you. It cannot hold space for what you are going through right now, today, in this moment – and it cannot introduce you to the others who are sitting in exactly the same place.

That is what a community can do.

What I have learned, after all this time, is that the single most healing thing is not a quote, or a poem, or even an article that perfectly describes what you are feeling. It is knowing that someone else felt it too.

So I created the Pet Loss Matters Support Group: a quiet, gentle space where the grief of losing an animal companion is never minimised or rushed, and where it is given the weight and dignity it deserves.

What You Will Find Inside

Nothing overwhelming, nothing rushed. When you join, you will find:

Daily Check-Ins – a gentle place each day to share how you are feeling, even if it is just one word.

Come As You Are live meetings – a warm, unhurried gathering. Pyjamas welcome, cameras optional, no judgement. Just people who understand.

The Emergency Care Kit – gentle guided practices for the hardest moments: the 3am waves, the anniversaries, the empty bed.

The Brain That Grieves – a video course in which Henry gently explains the neuroscience of grief, and why losing a companion can make you feel the way you do. Understanding it, even a little, can make it a lot less bewildering.

Daily affirmations, reflections and journalling prompts – questions and thoughts to help you sit with your grief rather than run from it, and put words to the things that feel almost unspeakable. Grief doesn't want to be fixed. It wants to be witnessed.

The Love That Remains – a free 120-page Pet Loss Matters Grief & Gratitude Journal, yours to keep, with space to write, space to feel, and space to remember.

Henry – Henry is a presence I created especially for Pet Loss Matters: a guide and a gentle voice, the keeper of every story, tribute and diary that has passed through this space. Inside the community, he presents the video lessons and guided practices, and offers quiet moments of reflection and remembrance.

And each other – the other members of this group. People who understand, because they are living it too.

The Pet Loss Matters Support Group is $5 a month to join. I want it to be accessible to anyone who needs it, and self sustainable – so it can continue to help as many people as possible.

All I ask is that you come as you are, and that you treat others in the group with the same gentleness you would want for yourself.

If you are ready, I would love to have you there.

The group is hosted on Skool, a private community platform. When you click the button, you'll be asked to create a free Skool account – it only takes a minute. It is a safe, closed group: your membership is not visible to the public, and the content inside is only accessible to members.

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